By themselves, they're just small moments in and around beer. Together, they're the culture we love.

no. 237

January 24, 2017

I went through college living by two simple drinking rules: 1) free beer is the best beer, and 2) drink the coldest beer within reach. Then I spent the summer after junior year interning at a new brewery in Cincinnati, OH, and everything changed.

Since then, I've set aside my rules in favor of Pale Ales, Dortmunder Lagers, and Tropical Stouts. When I returned to campus for senior year, my goal was to convince my friends to break outside of their beer comfort zones as well. Throughout that year, I acted as their guide as they discovered their new favorite styles.

Those friends and I have been working in the real world for the last eight months, and I realize now that they find beer to be as personal and impactful as I do. Over the holidays, we organized a brewery-filled reunion in Chicago.

As Dovetail Brewery owner Hagen Dost guided us through the barrels and tanks of his European-style brewery, it dawned on me that the journey I'd taken with my friends over the last couple years to get to this moment was what brought us here. And as he dropped knowledge on us, and as we sampled his wares, those two simple rules seemed decades gone. Beer is so much more, and I can’t wait to keep exploring it in the years to come.